DRENT, Harry

DRENT, Harry (c. 1861-1910)

Drent is buried in Mount Hope Cemetery, San Diego.

“HARRY DRENT. The Brandegee Herbarium (UC) includes at least 28 specimens collected on Guadalupe Island in 1898 by Harry Drent. Among there are 15 plants Brandegee himself did not collect the year before, including such rare ones as Crossosoma californicum, Phacelia phyllomanica, and Solanum wallacei ssp. clokeyi, the previously unreported Euphorbia misera and Lupinus bicolor, and perhaps the that specimens taken of Castilleja guadalupensis and Nicotiana attenuata. According to Stewart (1965:133), "Dutch Harry" Drent, a Hollander 38 years old in 1899, "uneducated but bright," was a deep-water sailor who made at least five trips to Guadalupe Island. He hunted goats there for about five months in 1896 (San Diego Evening Sun, 30 Sept. 1896), for some time in 1898, and from April to late September of 1899 (Stewart 1965). In 1898 he brought to San Diego four live birds of the soon to be extinct Guadalupe caracara, captured "by a trick I had learned while in South Africa" (Abbott 1933). He died in San Diego in 1910 (MacMullen 1969). ”

In 1898, goat hunter Harry Drent returned from Guadalupe Island with a load of goat meat — and four living Guadalupe caracaras. Drent captured the birds by shooting and winging the first, then using it as a decoy to lure in three others, which he lassoed with a short rope. He later told a San Diego paper that I have been offered $100 for the four, but I will not sell them. I have written the Smithsonian Institute, and am confident that I shall secure a high figure. While awaiting his windfall from Washington, Drent exhibited the birds in the back room of “a saloon on Fifth Street near G” in San Diego, where they “attracted lots of attention” but were eventually evicted by the saloon owner “on account of their dirty habits.” After taking his birds to California, Drent claimed that only three caracaras remained on Guadalupe. In fact, the species persisted, as the famed Rollo H. Beck discovered in 1900. Thirty years later, he wrote that Although I had no idea of it at the time it seems probably to me that I secured the last of the Guadalupe caracaras on Guadalupe Island on the afternoon of December 1, 1900. Of 11 birds that flew toward me 9 were secured. The other two were shot at but got away. The 11 birds were all that were seen…. And all that would ever be seen again.

In the News~

January 26, 1910 [SD Union and Daily Bee]: “Harry Drent dies at County Hospital. After lingering for several days dangerously near death, Harry Drent passed away at the county hospital yesterday. A week ago the man was found at the Santa Fe station in his underclothing. He was crazed from the effects of strong drink and fled when several men attempted to capture him. He was caught near the police station and sent to county jail. Later he was removed to the hospital where his death occurred yesterday. It is believed that his death resulted partly from exposure and over-indulgence in intoxicating liquor. For many years he was a familiar character on the waterfront, where he was known as "Dutch Harry." He was a fisherman by occupation and so far as has been ascertained was without any relatives in this country. ”